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Angola Education in UNITA-Claimed Territory
By the mid-1980s, UNITA had gained control over a large
part of
Angola's southeast and claimed to have gained the
allegiance of
more than 1 million Angolans. As an integral part of his
strategy
to win over the hearts and minds of the populations in the
occupied
area, UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi established a state
within a
state, complete with a system of schools and hospitals to
meet the
needs of the local populations. The town of Jamba, UNITA's
stronghold in southern Cuando Cubango Province, had a
population of
between 10,000 and 15,000, all of whom claimed loyalty to
UNITA and
Savimbi.
Although much of the information released by UNITA was
propagandistic, it provided a rough outline of the
educational
situation in UNITA areas. UNITA claimed that its complex
system
consisted of nearly 1,000 schools, in which almost 5,000
teachers
taught more than 200,000 children. A Portuguese reporter
who
visited UNITA-claimed territory in late 1987 reported that
the
UNITA education system consisted of two years of
kindergarten, four
years of primary school, and seven years of high school.
Upon
completion of high school, the brightest students were
given
scholarships to study at universities in Britain, Côte
d'Ivoire,
France, Portugal, and the United States. Others attended
middlelevel technical courses in agriculture, nursing, primary
school
teaching, and typing in Jamba's Polytechnical Institute.
UNITA's
academic organization closely resembled that of Portugal,
with
Latin an important part of the curriculum.
Another Portuguese source reported in mid-1988 that
there were
ninety-eight Angolan scholarship students studying in
Portugal
under UNITA sponsorship. Because Portuguese institutions
did not
recognize the courses taught in Jamba, UNITA-educated
students were
required to take the examinations from the fourth class
level up to
university entrance examinations, losing two or three
years of
their UNITA education in the process. In other European
countries,
however, UNITA-sponsored students took only the
examinations
required for admission to the education level for which
they wanted
to enroll. Nevertheless, UNITA preferred to send its
students to
Portugal because of the common language. UNITA-sponsored
students
generally studied agronomy, engineering, and medicine.
Data as of February 1989
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